The Candice Malcolm Show - November 16, 2021


The knives come out against Erin O’Toole


Episode Stats

Length

18 minutes

Words per Minute

203.77298

Word Count

3,813

Sentence Count

209

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

The knives have come out against Conservative Party Leader Erin O'Toole. And the Conservative Party and its leader, as well as the elites running that party, may be finally forced to face their own base. And let me tell you, the Conservative base is not happy.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The knives have come out against Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole, and the Conservative
00:00:03.760 Party and its leader, as well as the elites running that party, may be finally forced to
00:00:08.380 face their own base. And let me tell you, the Conservative base is not happy. I'm Candace
00:00:12.420 Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into
00:00:20.800 The Candace Malcolm Show. Let me tell you, there is anger that is brewing in the Conservative
00:00:24.880 Party. It is finally starting to bubble over into the public. There is infighting in the
00:00:29.920 party, and we're going to talk about it and break it all down on the program today. I
00:00:34.340 appreciate you tuning into The Candace Malcolm Show. If you like what we do at the show, if
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00:01:28.000 get your media from the government sources, from the government state broadcaster, people
00:01:32.880 like the CBC or the various newspapers who have gone to the Trudeau Liberals hat in hand
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00:01:41.920 holding things back, if they're being honest, being genuine about their coverage, because
00:01:46.360 they're dependent. They're beholden to the government. It's so important for a free society
00:01:50.680 to have independent media. So let me talk about what's happening in the conservative
00:01:56.260 party. Because basically, since the election ended, there's been a lot of grumbling. There's
00:02:01.000 been a lot of dissatisfaction among the base. On the show, I dedicated probably two weeks
00:02:06.100 every single day to talking about the various ways of how Aaron O'Toole failed, how he failed
00:02:10.680 to win the election, but also how he failed conservatives. He failed to promote a vision of conservative
00:02:15.000 ideas and policies. He flip-flopped on all of his core principles. So go back to when
00:02:19.820 he was running for leader of the party. He presented himself as an authentic, common sense,
00:02:25.400 the real deal, someone who was really going to cut through the noise, who was going to defend
00:02:29.960 Canadian values, defend our culture, push back against the woke left, and really stand for
00:02:35.440 something, stand his ground. He wasn't going to cave to the latest fads of the kooky left.
00:02:40.220 And really, that's what we wanted to hear. The last thing that Canada needs is yet another
00:02:45.840 socially trendy left-wing progressive party. We already have, what, four of those? And
00:02:51.160 conservatives are supposed to provide something different. They're supposed to stand their
00:02:54.540 ground. They're supposed to defend the sort of traditions and the basic institutions of our
00:02:59.660 country against all of the sort of latest trends and fads from the progressive left. That's what we
00:03:04.580 want from a conservative government. That's what we want from a conservative leader. That's what many
00:03:07.940 of us thought we had in Aaron O'Toole. But then the election came and we saw that he really didn't
00:03:13.300 want to do that. He wanted, his strategy was to sort of near the Trudeau liberals, to sort of repeat
00:03:18.620 whatever they're saying, whatever they believed on an issue. That's what Aaron O'Toole believed into.
00:03:22.760 So the election was fought on all the things that Justin Trudeau and the liberals wanted to talk
00:03:26.400 about. And rather than seeing Aaron O'Toole stand their ground and defend conservatism while also
00:03:32.040 leveling effective attacks on Justin Trudeau, we saw the opposite. We saw O'Toole was defensive
00:03:37.640 and because of that he just ended up caving and flip-flopping on all of the sort of major core
00:03:43.020 issues that that was being talked about on the election, whether it was vaccine mandates for
00:03:47.340 the civil service, whether it was on carbon taxes, whether it was on the legal rights of gun owners
00:03:53.300 in Canada to legally own their property. All of those issues we saw O'Toole just sort of cave and
00:03:59.080 the strategy didn't even pay off. It's not like he did all that, he conceded, he threw conservatives out
00:04:03.620 of the bus and he won or he gained ground. The opposite. He lost ground. Canadians weren't
00:04:07.800 interested. They saw someone who was sort of wavering, someone who was weak, someone who was
00:04:11.760 perhaps willing to say anything to get elected. They didn't like what they saw. They passed on him.
00:04:16.600 And so I think it's only right that the conservatives now do some soul-searching, do the difficult task
00:04:21.960 of saying, no, this is a failed strategy. We don't want to go down this path. Let's find a new leader
00:04:27.120 who can enthusiastically defend conservatives, who's authentic, who will be who they say they
00:04:32.000 are going to be, who presents themselves based on what they really believe in, not someone who's
00:04:36.380 just really willing to say anything to get elected. So here on the Candace Malcolm Show here at True
00:04:39.920 North, we went through in great detail all of the various ways that the conservatives were failed
00:04:45.160 or were let down by this leader. Interestingly, at the time, though, you know, there was definitely
00:04:49.940 grumblings. There was murmurings that I heard from lots of people within the conservative party,
00:04:54.540 as well as people outside small C conservative activists, people who were really the activists
00:05:00.560 of the party were the ones who were the most truly disappointed. The people who were more willing
00:05:04.480 to defend the status quo and Aaron O'Toole were sort of more the insiders, the sort of lobbyist
00:05:09.900 class, those kind of people who just sort of want to go along and get along and didn't want to make
00:05:14.560 any changes, just said, look, O'Toole's better than anyone else. Let's just go with the devil that we
00:05:18.560 know kind of idea. So now here we are two months later, and we're starting to see more of an uprising,
00:05:23.460 more people, more voices come out and say, no, no, Aaron O'Toole is not the guy for the job.
00:05:28.680 And so this was all led this week by conservative senator from Saskatchewan, Denise Batters, who
00:05:33.360 launched a petition to review Aaron O'Toole's CPC leadership within six months. So Batters is calling
00:05:40.100 on the conservatives to hold a review of O'Toole's leadership in the next six months, rather than
00:05:44.860 waiting for 2023. She released a video this morning and launched a campaign. And so I'll play a bit of
00:05:50.700 the video. But like I said, that the points that she's making here are completely correct. There
00:05:55.380 are exactly the same things that we have been talking about here on the program for the past
00:05:59.260 two months. Basically, under Aaron O'Toole's leadership, the party isn't growing, the party
00:06:04.140 is stuck. And really, when you have a leader who seems to be embarrassed and distancing himself
00:06:09.120 from the core values and ideas and principles of conservatism, you got a problem. And so that is
00:06:14.480 what Senator Denise Batters is saying in this video. Let's play this clip.
00:06:18.600 Aaron O'Toole lost this election by every measure. Our party lost half a million votes,
00:06:24.480 claimed fewer seats and a lower popular vote than in 2019. We lost diverse seats and MPs in the GTA,
00:06:31.560 Alberta, and in Vancouver suburbs. Mr. O'Toole's inability to communicate or connect with female
00:06:37.440 voters left us with an even wider gender gap. Aaron O'Toole lost a trust election to Justin Trudeau,
00:06:44.760 of all people. This campaign was not lost because of Mr. O'Toole's mistakes or inexperience. It was
00:06:51.580 lost because of what Canadian voters perceive as his character flaw, that he is not trustworthy.
00:06:57.840 You can't come back from that. Aaron O'Toole lectured our party members on election night,
00:07:02.860 telling us we need to have the courage to change into what he hasn't yet said. But members deserve
00:07:09.780 to have a say on this change and the future direction of this party, including our leadership.
00:07:15.520 Fellow Conservative Party members, join me in signing this petition and make your voice heard.
00:07:23.500 So Global News is reporting that her petition is part of a, quote, multi-step campaign that includes
00:07:28.780 MPs and senators as well as current and former party officials that want O'Toole
00:07:32.840 gone after September's disappointing election. So the website that was launched, membersvote.ca,
00:07:38.960 outlines the process for which this could happen. It says, the official petition under the Conservative
00:07:43.800 Party of Canada constitution was launched by Senator Denise Batters on November 15th, 2021.
00:07:49.680 To succeed within 90 days, 5% of Conservative members in five provinces must sign the petition. And it
00:07:56.500 notes that in the Conservative Party constitution, all of the territories come together to constitute
00:08:00.700 one province. So the threshold is pretty low there. 5% of Conservative members in just five provinces are
00:08:06.760 needed in order to launch a leadership review. And so, you know, this is really interesting because
00:08:11.600 we had, like I said, lots of murmuring, lots of sort of whispering among Conservative insiders and
00:08:17.680 Conservative activists, but not a lot of high profile Conservatives willing to come out and say this
00:08:22.980 directly that it is time to replace leader. We did have a handful of MPs, Shannon Stubbs, a couple of others
00:08:28.740 who basically said more or less the same thing, that they were unhappy with the direction that O'Toole was
00:08:32.900 taking the party, but nothing this direct. So Denise Batters really puts herself out there. Good for you,
00:08:39.120 Denise Batters. Good for you to articulate this because, like I said, it is the feelings and the attitude of so many
00:08:45.680 Conservatives that I have been talking to in the base that feel the exact same way. So Denise Batters really willing
00:08:50.720 to stick her neck out. And I know there's some criticism saying, oh, she's an unelected senator. But that's sort of the
00:08:55.780 purpose. The idea here is that within the Conservative caucus, if you're a Conservative MP, you might not be
00:09:00.580 happy with Aaron O'Toole, but you kind of rely on him. He's the one that is leading the party. If you
00:09:06.160 want to have a position, if you want to be part of the, they call the shadow cabinet, or if you want to
00:09:09.940 have a critic role, you have to be nice to him. You kind of have to suck up to him. And you can't really
00:09:14.160 express the views that you might be hearing from your constituents, hearing from your base. You can't
00:09:17.920 really represent the anger that you're hearing out there because at the end of the day, you know, you want a
00:09:23.440 position, you want a job, and you don't want to basically burn your boss publicly. And so it is
00:09:28.860 important in that way that you have a senator like Denise Batters who is able to do that because she's
00:09:33.360 sort of removed from the internal confines of the caucus. And in some ways, she can represent Conservative
00:09:38.720 members better than some of the MPs. So of course, Denise Batters is far from alone. We know that a
00:09:44.640 national councillor, Bert Chen, also launched a petition to have a review of Aaron O'Toole, but he was
00:09:51.040 suspended. He was kicked out of the National Council. At first, we were told it was suspended up to 60
00:09:55.400 days. Now, Hill Times is reporting the suspension is indefinite. And we know, as reported by True
00:10:01.280 North, that there was a letter that was sent to Bert Chen, basically describing a witch hunt. The
00:10:06.840 Conservative Party is going after Bert Chen, demanding to see his private communications, including a list of
00:10:13.040 anyone he talked to about Aaron O'Toole, emails, texts, phone records, handwritten notes, anything. It really
00:10:18.880 is ugly. It's a witch hunt. So the Conservative Party and the OLO, the Opposition Leader's Office,
00:10:24.820 is focusing their effort and their resources on attacking their own members and sort of squashing
00:10:29.620 out dissent, rather than trying to understand what went wrong in the last election, rather than trying
00:10:34.720 to focus on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. And we've heard from other Conservative leaders and
00:10:39.640 insiders. This is a thread from Dean Dalmastro. Dean Dalmastro is a former member of Parliament for the
00:10:45.560 Conservatives in the Harper government. And I'm going to read his thread because I think this is
00:10:49.720 really accurate and a good way of thinking about things. So Dean Dalmastro says this,
00:10:54.080 The Federal Liberal Party changed leaders after every losing election beginning in 2006.
00:10:58.760 The same arguments about staying united and focusing on fighting the other party were made
00:11:03.660 particularly in the case of Stéphane Dion. They were wrong. Does anyone believe that if given another
00:11:08.820 chance, Stéphane Dion would have defeated Stephen Harper? Well, of course not. Stéphane Dion was terrible and
00:11:14.420 the Liberals were right to get rid of him. But going back to Dalmastro's tweet here, it says,
00:11:18.400 The Liberals made the change and Michael Ignatia did even worse. He resigned and they changed later
00:11:23.520 again. The party survived four different leaders in four successive elections. Recent history shows
00:11:28.840 that those arguing that Denise Batter's efforts are cause for celebration for Justin Trudeau and the
00:11:33.040 Liberal Party are wrong. The truth is they're concerned that Aaron O'Toole or his policies will not
00:11:37.640 survive a vote of membership and with good cause. Given the rising cost of energy, groceries and the cost of
00:11:43.400 living generally, it will not be easy for Aaron O'Toole to justify his decision to support carbon
00:11:47.680 taxes. Also, social conservatives feel betrayed and the West is just flat out angry and feeling
00:11:52.700 abandoned by the conservative leader. The bottom line is that now is the only time that a leadership
00:11:56.880 review can occur and should. The suggestion that a review can wait until 2023, a time when an election
00:12:02.520 could be imminent, is dishonest at best. It's really a way to simply avoid membership altogether.
00:12:08.260 The Conservative Caucus may be divided on the issue, but the decision on who leads the party is not
00:12:13.140 theirs to make. That responsibility rests solely with Conservative members. The leader must have the
00:12:18.800 confidence and support of membership, which can only be demonstrated with a full membership vote.
00:12:24.360 So this is really right and I read the whole thing because I think it illuminates what one of the sort
00:12:29.240 of deeper issues here is that it seems that Aaron O'Toole is afraid of the base. It seems like he
00:12:33.880 doesn't want to face the base. He knows that he threw them under the bus, that he did so many things
00:12:38.000 throughout the campaign to anger them. And so his best hope is really to have caucus rally around him
00:12:43.660 and say, no, we're not going to allow this senator's petition to make its way to the base.
00:12:48.640 But what does this say about Aaron O'Toole? That he can't even face his own base. He can't even make
00:12:52.820 the case to his own members, to his own party, as to why he should continue to lead the party
00:12:57.280 into the next general election. I think that that shows just how far Aaron O'Toole has come from the base.
00:13:02.340 He thinks that in order to win a general election, he has to align himself with the left-wing legacy
00:13:07.740 media with liberal values and progressive values on all of these sort of major issues, including fiscal
00:13:13.480 issues. And then when it comes back to the base, he just sort of doesn't want to face them because he
00:13:19.360 knows that they just won't support his agenda. And so now we are seeing many MPs come out and defend
00:13:25.600 Aaron O'Toole. We'll sort of defend Aaron O'Toole. They're not so much defending Aaron O'Toole as they are
00:13:30.540 attacking Denise Batters. They're coming out with this really sort of disingenuous attack against
00:13:35.560 her, saying that she is distracting them from their important work of holding Justin Trudeau
00:13:40.120 accountable. So instead of seeing a real defense of Aaron O'Toole saying he's the right guy for the
00:13:45.540 job, this is why, he's good on this, he's strong on this, this is the way that we can lead forward,
00:13:51.120 this is the vision that we have for a Conservative candidate. We're not hearing any of that.
00:13:55.080 What we're hearing is sort of, how dare you, Denise Batters, distract us from our important work. And so here
00:14:01.300 is Conservative MP Michelle Rumpel saying basically just that.
00:14:05.940 This is an open message to my colleague from the Senate, Denise Batters. Denise, I have been working all week on an issue
00:14:18.760 that matters to my community. Denise, I have been meeting with dozens of stakeholders, talking to
00:14:25.980 people from all across the country on how we should fight Justin Trudeau's war on the energy sector. That's what I've been doing this week.
00:14:35.180 I can't believe I have to use my Facebook platform to do this, Denise. And so I'm about to do a bunch of media on this topic
00:14:41.660 and show Canadians that, as the official opposition, we're focused on Justin Trudeau. But you know what, Denise,
00:14:47.520 I had to do this morning? I had to respond to your petition calling for a leadership review in the party.
00:14:54.120 You know what that does to me? That clears my day from being able to stand up with my constituents. You know what it does?
00:15:00.680 It's going to fill the news tonight with your petition, as opposed to my, like,
00:15:06.540 trying to hold Justin Trudeau to account to get my community back to work. I'm so frustrated with this.
00:15:13.140 I can't believe you're making me do this, Denise. I can't believe I have to use my Facebook platform
00:15:16.880 and distract from my important work. Michelle Rumpel, look, I like Michelle. I have a lot of time
00:15:20.500 for Michelle. But again, this isn't really a good take. This isn't really a good response.
00:15:24.940 When is a good time to hold a leadership review? When is a good time to say, look,
00:15:28.860 the party leader isn't representing the base anymore? Is there any good time? No. The idea
00:15:33.000 is that you kind of go through the difficult task of doing soul searching and figuring out what went
00:15:38.320 wrong in the next election, so that you can properly position yourself in the next election
00:15:42.700 to face the real issues. And so this idea that the conservative MPs were just so busy doing all
00:15:47.780 this important work, and now they have to take time away from it, I think that's pretty weak. And
00:15:52.420 again, you see that this is sort of the talking points that are being pushed by O'Toole's office,
00:15:56.140 because a lot of the MPs, a lot of MPs are remaining silent, but the few that are
00:16:00.140 are going out and sort of making a defense of him all kind of fall along these lines. So we see
00:16:06.240 Michael Barrett say this,
00:16:08.640 Conservatives should focus on holding the Trudeau Liberals accountable and finding solutions to
00:16:12.320 make life better for Canadians. There's an affordability crisis with skyrocketing inflation,
00:16:16.380 rising food and housing prices, labor supply and supply shortages. Let's get back to work.
00:16:21.260 Likewise, Melissa Lansman, a new MP in Thornhill said this,
00:16:25.760 We have a cost of living crisis, out of control inflation, a war on Canada's energy sector and a
00:16:30.360 waning reputation on the world stage. That's just a start. This helps Justin Trudeau, not Canadians.
00:16:36.320 I'm a hard no, smarten up. Okay, so again, we're sort of told this idea that conservatives are so busy
00:16:44.140 fighting on all these issues. Can you name anything that the Conservative Party is doing to address any of
00:16:48.420 these issues? Cost of living crisis, out of control inflation? Oh, I will say on inflation,
00:16:53.000 Pierre Polyev is very articulate and very good spokesperson on this issue. But again, what are
00:16:57.280 they really doing? A war on Canada's energy sector? Again, I don't really see what the Conservative
00:17:02.300 Party is doing. In fact, when I looked at the media and the news in the last week, I don't see any of
00:17:08.100 these issues in the news. I don't see Conservatives talking about them at all. What I see in the news is
00:17:12.760 Conservatives and O'Toole basically coming to all the wrong conclusions when it comes to why they lost the
00:17:18.000 election. I see them further pushing out and punishing the Libertarians or the Civil Liberties
00:17:22.580 Caucus. And I see the continuation of this Conservative apology tour. There's this long
00:17:27.220 piece in CTV all about Tory MP Tim Upple basically saying that Conservatives were super racist back in
00:17:34.700 2015. And that that whole campaign run by Stephen Harper was awful, basically just parroting all of the
00:17:40.440 worst accusations from the Liberals and from the media from 2015 and conceding, saying those things are true,
00:17:46.180 admitting that they think that the Conservatives were racist back then, which is completely absurd.
00:17:50.760 But that's a story for another day. So again, I don't see the Conservatives actually out there
00:17:55.480 talking about these issues. I see this as like a very weak defense of Aaron O'Toole. Instead of again,
00:18:01.160 saying any reason why Aaron O'Toole himself is in a good position to lead the party, you know,
00:18:06.440 the attacks are all just basically saying that this is a distraction. Well, again, there is no good time
00:18:12.060 to hold a leadership review. But if the Conservatives want to be stronger, if they want to be better
00:18:16.480 positioned, if they want to learn anything from losing the last election, I think a very good
00:18:21.060 place to start is listening to the base. If the base wants a leadership review, then the base should
00:18:26.420 have a leadership review. And it will be up to Aaron O'Toole and his MPs to articulate the case as to why
00:18:32.320 they are in a good position to lead the party again to the next election. And if they can't do that,
00:18:37.140 well, now is a good time to start looking for a new party leader. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is
00:18:42.000 The Candace Malcolm Show.